Racer

We wear our hearts on our sleeves when it comes to bikes that inhabit the edges of the modern custom scene. To put it simply, the more unique and esoteric they are, the better we like them. And we’d put money on the fact that today’s bike is just about as esoteric as you’ll find anywhere…

When Honda released the latest incarnation of the Honda Rebel it was clear they wanted the custom scene to jump on board, with a marketing campaign to “make it your own”. But despite a cult following in parts of Asia and some notable exceptions, few have gone all in on the Rebel. Until now…

EXCLUSIVE: What do you get when a builder at the top of his game and a manufacturer with a game changing new bike cross paths? In this exclusive interview with Rough Craft’s Winston Yeh – done in his home city of Taipei – we talked with one of Asia’s best customisers about his new project…

Interested in building yourself a sprint racer? If your brain works anything like Germany’s Jo Hecht, then here’s a handy set of instructions for you to follow. Take one BMW R100R RS. Add an aircraft’s propeller spinner, a Yamaha XT500 tank, a Porsche RS spoiler, a Harley fender, a bunch of handmade aluminium parts…

Trust us. When it comes to finding amazing bikes in weird places, we at the House of Burnt Pipes have pretty much heard it all before. Just discovered a unit Triumph in a nearby barn or shed? Pffft! Unless it’s a three-wheeled Brough Superior or a priceless Harley down a toilet, we’ll barely bat an eyelid…

They say too much sugar makes you do silly things. Running around like an idiot. Uncontrollable giggling. Boundless energy. Which, strangely enough, are pretty much the same symptoms one exhibits after a serious run on a fully worked sprint racer. Introducing Moto Candy’s Sportster-powered ‘Lolly Pop’…

It’s taken a lot longer than we’d like, but there’s some cool custom bikes coming out of China. And with more money being thrown around in Beijing than at a bikie strip show there will be more. The custom bike scene will be huge there some day. And in the years to come they will look back at shops like Madrill Garage…

“He proceeded to tell me that the HRC MotoGP team just came back from the track and had seen my bike. They piled out of the van and proceeded to snap some photos with it – Marc Marquez included. I had missed them by only 3 or 4 minutes.” Welcome to the world of Iowa’s Chris Kent…

It’s easy to forget that the scrambler’s origins are steeped in racing. Sure, the modern-day interpretation seems to be more about enjoying nature than about silverware, but the ‘scramble’ the genre’s name refers to wasn’t a scramble across rough terrain, but a mad scramble to the finish line…

For decades journalists consistently using one word to describes the machines of Moto Guzzi, and that’s ‘beautiful.’ But for a brief period in the early ’80s the company produced some real horrors, none worse than the fully faired wind brick that was the Le Mans Mk 2…